Kickstarter Comes to the U.K.

The site, which previously only accepted projects from accounts set up in the United States, marked the launch with a number of U.K.-based projects, the first being a desktop arcade for the Raspberry Pi.

[partner id=”wireduk”]The U.K. projects sit alongside U.S. listings on the site with the most obvious difference being that the funding information is displayed in pounds sterling. The actual funding mechanism is identical to the U.S. system — projects must achieve full funding within the allotted time or they receive nothing at all.

The main difference is that backers of U.K. projects enter their payment information directly to the Kickstarter interface and not Amazon Payments. (The Kickstarter blog adds that “All pledges are processed securely through a third-party payment site.”)

The team behind Kickstarter (Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler) had initially planned to be in London for the launch but the trip — and related promotional events — has been postponed until Nov. 12 due to Hurricane Sandy.

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